October War of 1973: an Israeli tank driving past wounded soldiers.
The Yom Kippur supplements of the Israeli newspapers
were dedicated to the 35th anniversary of the October War, one of
the worst defeats of the Israeli military since the establishment of the state
of Israel. Most of the commentators felt obliged to connect the October 1973
war to the Lebanese war of 2006. And indeed, these two wars do have one
important characteristic in common that didn't escape the attention of the
Israeli journalists: the surprise syndrome.
The Syrian-Egyptian offensive, the day of Yom Kippur
1973, was a total surprise for the Israeli military and political
establishment, and although military intelligence provided a huge amount of reliable
evidence about a coming attack, they were unable to draw the conclusion that a
war was impending. Such a failure can easily be understood if one remembers the
general atmosphere prevailing in Israel after the military victory
of 1967. For the establishment as well as the wider public, Israel's military
superiority was so obvious, that no Arab regime would even dream to attack.
Moshe Dayan was defending the status quo when he spoke of "1000 years without
war or peace," and a young general named Ariel Sharon was threatening to
impose law and order from Turkey to Iran, if needed.
One of the consequences of this arrogance and limitless
self-confidence is blindness concerning the surrounding world. "No matter
what the Gentiles speak, what counts is what the Jews are doing" Prime
Minister Golda Meir used to say in these days. But the Gentiles—in this case,
the Arab regimes—were preparing a second round, receiving plenty of new
armaments from the Soviet Union and replacing the old corrupt military cast with
a new generation of senior officers, highly motivated by the need to regain
dignity for the Arab nation.
The Lebanese resistance to the 2006 Israeli aggression
was even more a surprise because, unlike the October war, it was a 100 percent Israeli
initiative, in which everything was planned and prepared ahead of time, that
is, except for the possible, in fact unavoidable, response of the victims.
Surprise! Hezbollah retaliated for the Israeli massive
attack by shelling the cities of northern Israel, and the State of Israel was
not prepared for such an obvious development. In a typically colonialist
attitude, the Israeli establishment forgot to take into consideration the
reaction of those being attacked, and like every colonial power was taken by
surprise. Like in 1973, like in the first invasion of Lebanon in
1982, like with the first and the second Intifadas. Like the French in Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam.
Overwhelming military superiority and surprise always
go hand in hand, connected by blind self-confidence and arrogance. Despite the
defeat in Lebanon
two years ago, arrogance is still the dominant tone of the Israeli leadership when
speaking about relations with the surrounding countries. This is why one can
easily predict that Israel will be, once again, taken by surprise, when it will
be confronted by the resistance of the peoples and the states that are not
ready to accept its hegemonic aspirations in the Middle East, especially its
lunatic project of a preemptive strike on Iran.
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